


brillant d'os

by CampionSayn



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Breakfast, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Post-Episode: s03e19 Plus Est En Vous, Sharing a Bed, Soft Brotherhood moments, contributing to this fandom when I should be sleeping, not beta read we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23731612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CampionSayn/pseuds/CampionSayn
Summary: Varian attends to his dad, his feral uncle and his intimidating aunt the morning after the battle with Zhan Tiri. Gotta have priorities, and they're family.
Relationships: Adira & Hector & Quirin & Varian (Disney: Tangled), Quirin & Varian (Disney), Ruddiger & Varian (Disney)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 176





	brillant d'os

_ That place between night and morning that feels like something between awake and dreaming. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Calm breaths taken in to steady movement, thought, and choice. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Peace spread throughout blood and bone as a decision is made. _   
  
Varian smiled through the crack in his father’s bedroom doorway, the not-quite-morning light that gave the feeling of autumn in late spring painting the three figures before him just enough to recognize their comfort.   
  
The battle with Zhan Tiri had wiped everyone out, not least of all those that had been under the thrall of the Mind Trap.   
  
Quirin had been quite possibly the least affected, hence his offer to his siblings to join him and Varian in Old Corona that they were unlikely to refuse in a state such as they were.   
  
They didn’t refuse and seemed grateful, but merely mounted the rhino, brought along the bearcats, travelled in silence all the way; they’d been glad of the sandwiches Varian made without hesitation, and then promptly followed Quirin like lost ducklings into bed. They barely remembered to strip down to tunics before passing out in a dead sleep.   
  


* * *

  
  
Hector blinked, blurry eyed but alert, the sight of the teenager stooped over and setting clothes--Hector’s own, Adira’s and Quirin’s alike--into a wicker basket not registering in his brain.   
  
He was honestly still so tired that he couldn’t even bring himself to look unimpressed or intimidating when the kid noticed Hector watching him, nearly stumbling at doing a double-take at acid colored eyes staring at him.   
  
“Oh, morning,” he whispered, giving a little bow in greeting and then picking up the other articles off the floor, “Sorry if I woke you, I just wanted to get these out of the way and bring you guys some clean clothes so you’d have something to wear after you’ve had a bath.”   
  
Hector looked over at Adira at the other side of the bed, face paint almost entirely gone and brushed over the pillows and sheets, and then at Quirin, the buffer between them and source of heat Hector was still leaning into without a trace of humiliation. They both looked entirely peaceful and Hector didn’t want to spoil the comfort that came part and parcel with being in their orbit in the quiet of not-quite-morning.   
  
He vaguely recalled Quirin introducing the kid as his son, so Hector kept his voice down and merely asked, “Bath?”   
  
Varian grabbed the last of the haul, Adira’s coat, and pointed towards the door, “To the right, first door you see. You’ll hear a little rumble when it’s done heating all the water for you guys, and any cleaning products you’ll need are in a basket at the foot of the tub.”   
  
Slipping the basket of dirty clothes out into the hallway, the slip of a boy stepped back in with his arms full of simple tunics and drawstring trousers that had doubtlessly all belonged to Quirin and Hector could smell lavender and lemon off of them, “Don’t worry about your animals, I’ll be feeding and watering them in twenty minutes or so. The rhino’s been given a whole bale of hay so far; plus I gave them each a heated blanket so they’ll probably go right back to sleep. Call me if you need anything.”   
  
Hector’s jaw had loosened, hanging open but not uttering a word as the boy gave one last smile and disappeared back out the door.   
  


* * *

  
  
Adira was perfectly aware that she was probably going to catch hell from Hector later, but after she’d overheard the words ‘bath’ and ‘heating’ who was she to deny the siren’s call of the water gurgling in the pipes and giving their foretold rumble a mere few moments after the boy left and Hector had made himself cozy back under the covers?   
  
Anyway, she was enjoying herself too much to care if Hector got huffy about it later.   
  
Quirin’s child was a  _ genius _ .   
  
It took her a little while to figure out the levers that allowed for  _ pre-heated  _ water to fill the tub and some fumbling with the little colored orbs in a bowl just where the boy said they would be, but she followed the instructions the boy had written and was more than pleased with the end results.   
  
She breathed in, the smells of rose and violets filling her senses, the water relaxing all her knotted and bruised muscles so she felt calm down to her bones. The grime and debris from days on end under the power of the Mind Trap washed away with far more ease than with plain river water; and she was fairly certain that her hair was smoother than it had ever been in her  _ life  _ as it floated around her in bright pink water.   
  


* * *

  
  
“Hot water baths and then this spread at noon? You’re spoiling us.”   
  
Varian smiled, warm and soft as he finished prep work on yet another round of pancakes he’d been improving the recipe of since he was ten, this bunch much sweeter and perfectly fitted to be lovely and fluffy with the chocolate, blueberries, honey and butter he added as needed; the cakes he had baking in the oven still needing a good ten minutes until completion.   
  
“Well, since you guys had a rough time yesterday...and who knows how long before that...I figured a good bath, clean clothes and a rich breakfast...brunch?...couldn’t go wrong. Just hope there’s enough for all of us.”   
  
Quirin pressed a kiss to his son’s crown just above his streak, but kept out of his way, waving his brethren over to the spare seats Varian had apparently dragged out of storage and already wiped down so they were no longer covered in cobwebs from the garden shed.   
  
He smiled wider as he observed the two of them in taking the seats.   
  
_ (But his eyes traced the lines of Hector’s form and took notes on how his skin seemed to stretch to cover bone and too wiry muscle; how he’d apparently gone through with simply tattooing that stripe of azure across his nose and the ink seemed quite old. With a slight head tilt, he made note that even Adira hadn’t gone that far, her skin soft over curves of muscle and face clean of red point for the moment.) _   
  
Hector was actively biting his lips to keep what was probably a wave of saliva escaping down his chin to ruin the tunic two sizes too big for him he’d chosen to wear after his turn in the ( _ wonderful _ ) bath.   
  
Adira looked like she might  _ cry _ .   
  
His son had truly outdone himself.   
  
The table was much bigger than it had been before his time in the amber, and there was a tablecloth covering it in shades of the moon during harvest time; something in its presence making both father and son more likely to actually remember to eat from one day to another even when they were quite busy.   
  
But the spread laid out before the lot of them could have drawn them in without even that.   
  
Fresh apple cinnamon cider; milk with fresh cream on top; almond honey malt all in pitchers ready to pour stood at the center, cups surrounding them in saucers to take at leisure.   
  
And branching out from them on all sides were foods Quirin was quite sure his friends hadn’t dreamt of seeing in daylight hours.   
  
Spiced molasses cookies cluttered beside a large tin of pumpkin pie with candied nuts decorating the crust like bird tracks in winter. A tureen Quirin hadn’t seen in years stood full of butternut squash soup, steaming and ready.    
  
Black rye bread on a cutting board already sectioned at the ready for the selection of cold roast beef still wet with juices; little white dishes of onions, garlic, lettuce leaves crisp from early morning dew. Salad dressing that smelled of pomegranate, sides of bright raspberry jam, clotted cream fresh and ready to take up and devour.   
  
And further outward seemed more surprising foods at the ready that would have been difficult if anyone had been making them that wasn’t Varian.   
  
Ground roasted potatoes and eggs in little earthenware bowls to keep flavor and warmth; the finest collection of eggs beside them--poached, scrambled, fried, hard-boiled and devilled perfectly--butter and salt at the ready to add flavor where it probably wasn’t needed. Bacon stacked on a large plate to the left, still gleaming with grease and jiggly with fat from one place to another that smelled potent even from Quirin’s bedroom before he’d fully awakened.   
  
In a clear glass bowl closer to the window so the light hit it perfectly, a collection of plums and figs were present beside what Quirin knew to be a rather genius collection of sharpened bird bones to eat the fruits from; as Varian had put it, the salt of the bones blended well with the sweetness of the fruit and reminded those that devoured that their meal was once alive. Rather poetic, if a little morbid.   
  
But that wasn’t Varian’s most unusual dish and Quirin wasn’t at all surprised that while Adira took her seat and began to take a little of everything  _ (easily stuffing a slice of pie and two cookies into her mouth, first thing) _ in turns, Hector took his seat and looked with singular focus at one of the smaller dishes hiding beside the jam and a glass container filled with pieces of richly filled honeycomb.   
  
Within, it looked a little like pudding, perhaps chocolate, but when he looked over at Quirin grinning knowingly, it was an absolute certainty that it  _ wasn’t _ .   
  
The leader of Old Corona grabbed a slice of the rye bread, slathering it in butter before slipping a poached egg over it and pushing the little dish in question over to the most feral of the Brotherhood, “Varian, when on earth did you find the time to make blood mousse? Doesn’t this take forever to make?”   
  
The boy took hold of the large tray the pancakes sat on and moved to deposit it near the pie that Adira had utterly demolished, smile wide and face open as she lifted a plate and he easily dished her out two of each flavor and type, dribbling syrup heavily on it for her, “I actually found a way to make it so it only takes half an hour. Xavier made a bet with Monty and Attila that there was a way to slaughter an animal that didn’t waste the blood and I kind of got roped into helping Attila because Rapunzel and Monty still don’t really get along. Technically I didn’t have to cut the time it took for the mousse, but I was trying to be efficient. Is it good?”   
  
Hector had the vague feeling that if some sort of clock set atop the oven hadn’t gone off at that second, the boy would have watched him and taken in every emotion that passed through him at the first taste of the treat.   
  
As it were, while he bent down and retrieved what every last adult in the room recognized as an old Dark Kingdom delicacy of scalded and malted milk cake, white as new snow and brushing against the old webs of memory to build up a sense of nostalgia for what was long gone, Hector took a bite and considered.   
  
...The boy deserved some respect.   
  
And he would _get it_.    
  
Later. After Hector finished the mousse off, had two slices of the milk cake  _ (Adira would eat all of that over his dead body)  _ to go with the plums he ate off of polished bones, and practically melted into his chair when he started in on the bacon and found his stomach distended for what must have been the first time in years.   
  


* * *

  
  
Outside, under clouds that seemed to erupt from a white too pure to ever have existed, the sun gentle behind them, Ruddiger looked into an open window onto his boy, Quirin and the guests; much like some humans assumed their gods did for lack of anything else to do from one moment to the next.   
  
Varian had set the binturongs and the rhino up rather nicely so that their guests might appreciate the morning after a victory as peacefully as possible. The predators were only too happy to receive all the spare eggs the raccoon had brought out to them at Varian’s suggestion, hauling along some gutted and de-boned herring with mushrooms as a side. Varian had even given Ruddiger a small barrel of cabbages and too hard apples for anyone  _ (even his friend)  _ to enjoy to give the rather imposing rhino that, while content to eat the hay and graze on wild grass, appreciated the effort.   
  
  
Once he was certain all were settled and content, Ruddiger took his own meal  _ (apples, candied nuts and a whole ball of clotted cream Varian had filled with jam just for him) _ and chose to observe the humans.   
  
Adira was rather genuine in her appreciation for everything that Varian had done for them; her touch aversion was something both boy and raccoon had remembered Lance telling them about and had taken to heart that she probably wouldn’t like it if they pushed too hard.   
  
She’d inhaled half the food and taken the liberty to squeeze Varian in a bone-crushing one-armed hug.   
  
Hector had honestly made Varian nervous and Ruddiger even more so than that. Eugene had spoken of him after the confrontation with Cassandra and Project Obsidian and had been expecting him to sneer and deride the first chance he got on waking up out of exhaustion and finding himself in the company of Varian taking his clothes.   
  
That didn’t happen, and Ruddiger was all too glad to hear the man compliment Varian on the time and effort of the meal, but especially when it came to something as strange as the blood sweet and a traditional food Varian had only heard about once while eavesdropping on his dad and king Edmund at the Snuggly Duckling.   
  
Quirin….    
  
The raccoon smiled as wide and proud as any human at seeing the man make sure his son actually sat down to eat, proud of him in earnest and here and there squeezing his hand, patting between his shoulders and telling the other two about all the things Varian had done for the kingdom, his alchemy, his courage.   
  
Yes, it was good. 

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a 5+1 thing, but I couldn't really figure out what the 1 was supposed to be. Plus, I just kind of liked the idea of Varian spoiling his older family members.


End file.
